“Touch grass” is a reminder to urbanites to get outside, as though that brief interlude of natural air and sun and greenery were a cigarette break for the soul before heading back inside, where real life happens.
It ain’t me.
I’m a country girl, the kind who, on a best kind of day, lies in the grass so long I forget to touch the computer. I am at home in the natural world thanks to my urban transplant parents, especially my dad. Before I was born he chose land in Egremont based on its potential for siting a house that would overlook the clear, cold Green River.
I’ve only recently come to understand the extent to which my imaginative early life centered around the river. It was the setting for my most memorable games, make believe and birthday parties, for my most beautiful dreams and scariest nightmares.
As for Dad, he was Brooklyn through and through, so when he landed on the river, in the middle of the fields and forests, it brought out of him an oddball paranoia as well as a part…
